Demon Mania (Demon Frenzy Series Book 2) Page 3

  “I guess so.”

  “Get the Winchester and open the garage door but keep back where nobody can shoot you. Understand?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Alejandra’s in the house, so if she comes out don’t shoot her. And I’m guessing somebody’s going to come out holding Emily. Whatever you do, don’t shoot Emily. Understand?”

  “Yes. Emily’s my niece. I’ll be careful.”

  “Good. But any other asshole who comes out of that house is fair game, just so he’s not holding Emily. Don’t break the window until you see I’ve made it to the back of the house. I don’t want any noise until then.”

  “What if you get shot?” he asked.

  “Then do your best to save Emily. Shoot anybody you need to, just save my baby.”

  “Okay.”

  Amy ran as quickly and quietly as she could to the rear corner of the house. She cocked the Ruger and stood with her back pressed against the stucco wondering why she hadn’t been shot. A moment later she heard glass breaking as Billy kicked open the garage window.

  She heard a couple quiet voices in the house, and then the sound of another window breaking, this one on the side of the house. She peered cautiously around the corner and saw a rifle barrel poking out of the dining room window.

  “We’ve got the house surrounded,” Amy yelled. “If you leave the woman and baby alone and get out of the house with your hands up we won’t kill you. Just get in your fucking car and get out of here. If you don’t we’re going to shoot you full of holes.”

  Another window broke, this one a kitchen window in the back of the house just fifteen feet from where she was standing. A rifle barrel poked out of it, moved back and forth looking for a target, and then a head wearing a ski mask stuck out and looked around.

  The top of the head came off, taking the whole ski mask with it. The face beneath the mask looked puzzled.

  Amy re-cocked her Ruger. Though it was double action she could shoot better with it cocked.

  “The rest of you don’t need to die,” she yelled. “Put your weapons down and go out the front door with your hands up and we’ll let you drive away.”

  “You don’t have anyone surrounded ‘cause you’re the only one out there,” a male voice yelled from inside. “I’m holding your baby and I got a big butcher knife in my other hand. You got thirty seconds to throw down your gun and come in the back door with your hands behind your head. If you don’t, after thirty seconds I’m gonna cut off your baby’s head and toss it out the window like a softball. And while you’re thinking all this over, why don’t you have a look at what’s standing beside that propane tank there behind the house.”

  Amy looked at the big propane tank. A listener was standing beside it, grinning at her.

  “You got twenty more seconds,” the man yelled.

  “Okay,” she said, “I’m losing the gun.” She de-cocked the Ruger and tossed it to the ground several feet in front of her. “Do you see that?”

  “I see it. Now come in the back door with your hands behind your head. Any funny business and you and the baby both get it. But maybe we’ll let you live long enough to see the baby’s head come off.”

  Amy heard someone chuckling at the witticism. She turned the knob of the back door, put her hands behind her head and eased it open with her knee. The man she had shot was still standing at the kitchen window with what was left of his head hanging out of it, and five other black-clad people had rifles aimed at her. One of them was holding Emily with his other arm.

  “Frisk her, Sammy,” he said.

  One of the men handed his rifle to a crony and frisked her, spending more time on her breasts and crotch than necessary.

  “She’s okay,” he said, “but I like ‘em with more meat on the bone.”

  “Okay, let’s get the fuck out of here,” said the man holding Emily.

  What was left of Alejandra’s body was lying on the living room floor, shriveled to half its usual size and riddled with holes oozing blood and pink liquefied flesh. A demon was kneeling over her, sucking out whatever was left of her insides with thick pulsating tentacles. It scarcely glanced at them as they walked past it and went out the front door.

  Amy’s hands were still behind her head and there was a man on each side of her tightly grasping her arms. They were nearly to the SUVs when the man on her right let go of her arm and fell to his knees. Then the man on her left fell face forward, and she saw the bloody hole in his back as her ears rang with the noise of two shots. There was a third shot, and a man in front of her collapsed.

  She turned and saw Billy shambling toward her, cocking the lever of his Winchester. He was just getting ready to fire again when his body fell backwards as if punched in the gut by a heavy fist.

  The SUV in front was already speeding away. The man holding Emily ran to the other one and got in the driver’s seat. Now there was just one man left, and he leveled his rifle at Amy’s chest and said, “Get in the fucking car!” She was about to do that when he suddenly fell backwards with a hole in his chest.

  Amy grabbed his rifle, but before she could shoot out a tire of the SUV it peeled away down the road. She carefully aimed as it sped away, but she wasn’t familiar with this rifle and was frightened of somehow harming Emily, and instead of hitting the rear tire her bullet struck the gravel road at least five feet behind the vehicle.

  She realized too late that she stupidly hadn’t looked at the license plate, but at least she’d noticed that it was a Chevy Tahoe with a sizable dent above the right rear wheel well.

  She ran to Billy and grasped his hand. He was lying flat on the ground even though he must have somehow managed to sit up to fire that last shot. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and his guts were glistening through a bloody hole just above his belly button. His face was deathly white and his eyelids were fluttering as if he didn’t have the strength to hold them open, but he spoke.

  “Did I do okay?” he asked.

  “Yes, Billy, you did good,” she said. “You did really good.”

  He smiled and shut his eyes. She knelt there for a moment feeling the warmth fade from his hand, then she grabbed the Winchester and ran to her Dodge with a rifle in each hand.

  She drove so fast that the little car was skidding wildly on the narrow gravel road, which after a couple miles dead ended into a paved county road. Having no idea which way to turn, she got out and quickly examined the pavement. Tires made dusty from the gravel had left gray marks in both directions as they turned, but she couldn’t tell which marks were most recent.

  She didn’t have time to think about it; she got back in her car, turned right, and hit the accelerator hard while she keyed 911 on her cell phone.

  “Somebody has kidnapped my baby!” she yelled.

  Her tires were past their prime and she was pushing them way beyond their safe limit. It was difficult to stay on the road with the operator pressing her for details, many of them seemingly irrelevant or repetitious. She came to a crossroad but kept going straight; one direction seemed as good as another, so there was no point in slowing down to turn.

  “Don’t attempt to follow them,” the operator kept telling her. “Cars have already been dispatched to apprehend the perpetrators. Find a safe place to turn around and drive to the sheriff’s office in Silver Stone.”

  “Like hell!” Amy yelled.

  “I repeat, turn around now and stop your pursuit.”

  “I gotta call my husband,” Amy said and cut the connection.

  She nearly ran off the road while trying to key Shane’s number. The moment he answered she started raving in such a wild burst that he couldn’t understand her, and when he finally did he told her the same thing the operator had.

  “Go to the police station,” he said. “I’ll meet you there in seventy minutes. I’m already heading to my car. Don’t go back to the house, it’s probably not safe there.”

  “Look, Shane, I don’t know if I’m going the right direction or the wrong directio
n, but I’m gonna keep going and see what I can find.”

  “No, Amy, you’re going to get yourself killed. Turn around now and go to town. I’m in my car right now, I think maybe I can be there in about an hour if a cop doesn’t stop me. Are you turning around?”

  “No. I’ve got to find Emily.”

  “Listen to me, Amy. By now there’s an all-points bulletin out and every cop car anywhere for miles around is looking for two dark blue SUVs, one of them a Tahoe with a dent in back, so let them do their job. I want you to turn around now and head to the police station, and I’ll meet you there in an hour. Promise me.”

  “Shane, I’ve got to find her.”

  “Promise me,” he said, his voice firm as steel.

  “All right,” she said. “I’m turning around. I’ve got to hang up, the phone battery is almost dead.”

  She hit the brakes and barely got stopped in time to avoid sailing through a stop sign where the road dead ended into another. Now which direction?

  She turned left and pushed the pedal to the floor. She hated lying to Shane, but she wasn’t going to stop driving until she found her child. She fished in the glove compartment for her phone charger and then remembered it was in Shane’s Jeep.

  She’d been driving now for close to an hour. The land had become hilly, and the narrow road twisted and wended its way through knolls and valleys. She was navigating a steep curve to the right when the phone rang.

  “Is this Mrs. Malone?” an unfamiliar voice asked.

  “Yes.”

  “This is Sheriff Candy of Silver Stone. I want to tell you we’ve found your baby and she’s alive and well.”

  “What? She’s all right?”

  “Yes, she’s fine. The suspect has been arrested and right now both him and your baby are being brought to the station. She should arrive in about twenty minutes.”

  Amy was sobbing so hard she couldn’t speak.

  “What’s that you said?” the sheriff asked.

  “Nothing. I…are you sure you have her?”

  “I’m sure. I’m told she’s crying her head off in the car but she don’t have a bruise or a scratch. Give me your location and if there’s a car anywhere nearby I’ll have it give you an escort to the station.”

  Amy pulled to the side of the road and tried to get her breathing under control. “I’m okay, I don’t need an escort,” she said. “I’m turning around right now.”

  “You said these kidnappers were some kind of armed gang?” the sheriff asked. “Do you know anything more about them?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know there aren’t some more of them out there looking for you right now? Out there on them back roads.”

  “I guess there could be.”

  “That’s why I’m gonna send a car to escort you if there’s one anywhere nearby. Give me your exact location.”

  At this point she didn’t know her exact location, somewhere on some narrow road in the middle of nowhere, but she described the route she’d taken as well as she could remember. The phone was beginning to break up and fade by the time she was finished. She tried to call Shane, but the battery was dead.

  The road was too narrow for a U-turn, and she had to drive another half mile before she found a driveway to turn around. She drove a few miles and then turned right, hoping it was the same road she’d been on before, but after ten or fifteen minutes she began to have doubts.

  Earlier her nerves had felt steady, but now that the crisis was over her hands were shaking badly. An old green SUV was sitting at a stop sign on a gravel road to her right, and the cold bugs started crawling around on her spine as soon as it pulled out behind her. It was following very close, its bumper no more than a yard from hers, and when she tried speeding up it sped up too and kept the same distance. She slowed to a crawl and pulled as far to the right as she could on the crumbling berm, but the SUV didn’t pass her.

  In her rear-view mirror she could see the faces of the driver and the passenger beside him, and there was a third man leaning up from the back seat. They looked like good ol’ boys, their fat round faces happy about something. The passenger was speaking on a phone.

  At least they weren’t wearing black. She sped up to about fifty, which was too fast for this road, and the SUV stayed on her bumper. She tried her phone again, wanting to call 911, but it was lifeless.

  The SUV tapped her bumper and then tapped it again, and in the mirror she saw the two fat faces in front laughing. And then she saw light at the end of the tunnel—a car appeared at the top of a hill coming toward her, and the lights on the roof told her it was a police car. The good ol’ boys must have seen it too, because the SUV eased back a few feet and the faces stopped laughing.

  She stopped her car in the center of the road and laid on her horn. The police car stopped a few feet in front of her car and a voice through a loudspeaker said, “Get out of the car and put your hands on the roof.”

  Amy was confused but she knew better than to resist arrest. She got out and placed her hands on the roof. A stocky police officer wearing dark glasses stepped out of the car with her gun drawn, and a second later the three good ol’ boys got out of their SUV and threw Amy face-first to the pavement. One had a shotgun and the other a pistol.

  The police woman’s face was square and hard like a sunburned cinder block wearing sunglasses. She kept her gun on Amy and said nothing while one of the men frisked her, and when he was done she tossed him a set of handcuffs and he cuffed Amy’s wrists behind her back and pulled her to her feet.

  Two of the men led her to the SUV and shoved her onto the floor of the backseat. The man with the pistol climbed onto the seat and put his feet on her ribs to hold her down while the one with the shotgun got behind the wheel.

  Chapter 4

  “Your house is already pretty much down to the ground, but it’s still burnin’,” Sheriff Candy said. “That rubble’s gonna be too hot to sift through till sometime tomorrow.”

  “What about Billy?” Shane asked. “She told me her brother was shot in the front yard.”

  “Yep, that’s what she told 911 too, but there wasn’t no corpse layin’ in the yard and there wasn’t no blood stains either. My guess is tomorrow we’re gonna find what’s left of her brother in that rubble. I just hope we don’t find your baby in there too.”

  Shane didn’t say anything. Sheriff Candy was about forty-five or fifty years old, short and thickset with thick gloomy eyebrows above his morose brown eyes. He kept picking up things from his desk, looking at them unhappily, and putting them back down, a ballpoint pen, a Zippo lighter, a small calendar. He was sweating even though his office was air conditioned.

  “We got half the state out there looking for a dark blue Tahoe with a dented rear fender,” he said. “Every cop in every county around here, highway patrol and you name it, but nobody’s seen it. Tell me, Mr. Malone, has your wife been actin’ depressed lately, actin’ funny in any way you can recall?”

  “No.”

  “This Monday about 11:30 a.m. she blacked out at a restaurant called Tia Marie’s,” the sheriff said. “When she come to she was disoriented according to the waitress and felt too weak to carry her baby to the car. She tell you anything about that?”

  “She said something.”

  “Would you say that’s ordinary behavior for your wife?”

  “No.”

  “Well then, I guess you’d have to say she’s been actin’ a little funny lately, wouldn’t you?”

  “Is that everything?” Shane asked.

  “That’s all I got right now,” the sheriff said. “I’ll call you up soon as I find out anything more. Where you planning to stay, by the way?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “You know there’s some rooms above Tilly’s Tavern. They’re nothin’ fancy but it’s a place to sleep. I guess you already know I don’t want you leavin’ the area till we get this sorted out.”

  Shane stepped out of the small office and shut the
door behind him. A female deputy with a hard square face was sitting at a desk in the outer room, and though she was wearing dark glasses he could feel her eyes on him as he left the building.

  He drove to the gun store and bought a used .40-caliber Smith & Wesson SD, a cheap inside-the-belt holster, a box of cartridges, a pair of binoculars, a prepaid cellphone, a powerful flashlight with a long handle like a club, and some batteries for it. In the parking lot he loaded both magazines, slid one into the gun and put the other in his jeans pocket.

  He headed out of town in the direction of his house, but he had no interest in watching it burn the rest of the way down. His intention was to try and follow the same route Amy had described rather vaguely over the phone.

  Five other men worked with him on the construction crew, and three of them he liked and trusted. He called one of them while he drove.

  “Jim, my daughter’s been kidnapped and my wife is missing.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “Will you help me look for them when you get off work?”

  “Fuck that, man, I’ll leave right now. That load of plywood hasn’t come in yet, so we ain’t really doin’ nothing much here anyhow.”

  Shane described the Tahoe and Amy’s green Dodge Dart, told him the license plate number and described the general route she’d been taking.

  “An hour and a half ago she was headed southeast,” he said. “So she could be pretty far away by now or maybe not. If you see the Tahoe don’t try anything stupid, just call me. They’re armed and dangerous.”

  “So if I see it you just want me to call the cops?”

  “Call me first. I don’t trust Sheriff Candy.”

  “You’re right on that,” Jim said. “Nobody trusts that bastard.”

  “You happen to know where he lives?”

  “Yeah, he’s got a little blue house ‘bout a mile south of town on Slate Road. It’s on your left if you’re heading away from town. There’s that old shut-down shoe factory on your right and then Candy’s place is the next house on your left.”